Martin Collins, reflecting on the dismal track record of a great many second and third marriages, suggests that liberals have sullied the marriage institution, ordained by God Almighty to be permanent and holy, elevating debased homosexual and transgender relationships, while treating God-ordained marriage with contempt, claiming that marriage is worse than slavery. Because of the hardness of their hearts, the offspring of Jacob are bringing defilement upon the land, reaping the consequences of covenant-breaking. God made us male and female, and has designed marriage to create one flesh, symbolic of Christ's love for the Church as His Bride. The evil of the mixed marriages in the Book of Malachi was a spiritual defilement, yoking spiritual and worldly elements, intrinsically unequal. Those evil men in Judah who rejected their wives, marrying pagan women, thought that their sacrifices to God would purify this violation of God's Law. Similarly, some in the greater Church of God (an institution which includes the Church of the Great God) have become careless in their marriage vows, beginning to imitate the world in their casual approach to the God-plane state of marriage. Sadly, certain individuals within God's Church are breaking both the spirit and letter of the marriage covenant, with callous husbands dealing treacherously with the wife of their youth, and wives similarly acting unfaithfully to their spouses. God hates divorce but has allowed divorce to take place because of the hardness of hearts. In the meantime, Jesus Christ, using the example of the prophet Hosea, models perfect love for an unfaithful spouse, taking her back after her display of hideous disloyalty. God's called-out ones resemble Hosea's unfaithful spouse, with Christ loving her and redeeming her despite her ignoble behavior. In our marriages, we must imitate the fathomless love that Jesus Christ has for His Bride—the Israel of God.

Martin Collins, referring to a recent study reported by Psychology Today, stating that cohabitation has led to increased divorce, marital violence, and lack of fidelity after marriage, points out that mass media has shamelessly used sex to promote materialism. Sex has been characterized as the cornerstone of mass persuasion. Consequently, faithful marriage is endangered as the flames of lust, encouraged by mass media, have caused individuals to sin against their own bodies. God invented marriage to typify the union between Christ and the church, designing male and female (not the 58 genders proposed by one major media network) to meld into one complementary union-a single organism. The world mocks marriage, ignoring the rules instituted by God Almighty which would guarantee its success, body-body, soul-soul, and spirit-spirit. God asks Christians to marry another Christian in order to avoid the pain, lack of compatibility, and heartache of being unequally yoked. Compartmentalization is not an option in a Godly Marriage. In the Ephesians 5:22 formula, wives subject themselves to their husbands as to Christ, but husbands are mandated to love their wives as Christ loved the church, being willing to sacrifice their lives for them. God will not answer the prayers of husbands who do not love their wives. As both husband and wife yield to Jesus Christ, their love can be perpetually rekindled.

Our culture appears to be in steep decline, a fact we can see in the undermining of marriage throughout society. Despite having served mankind well down through the millennia, the institution of marriage is crumbling under a three-pronged attack engineered by Satan the Devil. John Ritenbaugh teaches that marriage is vital to understanding God's purpose and learning to live in harmony with one another.

Martin Collins continues his analysis of Malachi's appeal to the lethargic people of Judah, an appeal emphasizing God's love, reminding them that their lack of blessings emanated from their abandonment of their Covenant with God. Malachi assures them that if they will repent, God's favor will resume, but if they continue defiling the Covenant, a day of reckoning will inevitably come. There are frightening parallels to our current society, which has publicly trashed God's Covenant in its laws and in the anti-God curriculum in the public schools and universities. The leaders, clergy, and common people, rejecting the fatherhood of God, are all responsible for the hideous curses falling on our people. All men and women, made in the similitude of God, are the offspring of God in their created natures. God the Father is specifically the Father of Christ. Jesus Christ, as the Logos, became manifest in somatic form as Melchizedek, King of Peace, High Priest of God, a Being who had existed eternally. The title "Son of God" expresses a unique relationship that Jesus Christ has with God the Father, a unity of substance with the Father. When applied to the First Fruits, the title "Son of God" describes a relationship of equality. The title "Son of God" describes Christ's role as the Revealer of God, the sole mediator of knowledge of God. God is the Father of all who believe in Christ in a special sense (removed from grim condemnation to privileged son-ship) that does not apply to unbelievers. The treachery against God's Covenant has a parallel with the men of Judah divorcing their mates and marrying pagan wives. In our marriage relationships, purity is maintained by attention and constant vigilance. Divorce is invariably attended by treachery, deceit, hypocrisy, hostility, and violence. Marriage can only be terminated on the grounds of death, sexual sin, and desertion. God created the marriage covenant for the purpose of godly seed to establish a spiritual family, emblematic of Christ's relation

John Ritenbaugh focuses on the apostle Paul's response to the bitter altercation between Euodia and Syntyche, women church leaders at Philippi, who succeeded in polarizing the congregation by their contentious pride, placing their obsessive desire to be right over unity. Paul urges them to follow the example of Christ, who emptied Himself of His divinity, assuming the role of a bond servant, exalting others over Himself, prompting God the Father to exalt Him above all others. Godly leadership is a function of submitting to the covenants God has made with us, including the marriage covenant, setting the proper pattern of all forms of institutions, including educational, governmental, medical, and religious institutions. Secular, progressive humanists, inspired by Satan, in their hatred toward God's covenants, through their endorsement of moral relativity and the new morality, fostering adultery, fornication, as well as feminism, homosexuality, polygamy, and transgender aberrations, have savagely attacked God's marriage covenant. Progressive humanists over the years have succeeded in making divorce as easy as falling off a log, and murder on demand (abortion) a convenience attended with no longer any trace of resistance. Paradoxically, hedonism, a philosophy which holds that pleasure is the highest aim in life, can never lead to real pleasure, but seeking to please God by serving others brings maximum pleasure. The marriage relationship, becoming totally one with one another as God the Father and Jesus Christ are at one with one another, provides the pattern of the true meaning of love—not feelings, but actions (consisting of serving and caring). Keeping God's Commandments demonstrates the highest form of love. Along with all the other gifts in the universal Edenic Covenant, identifying God as our benevolent Creator, who designed this earth for mankind to tend and keep, providing the marriage covenant as a God-plane relationship, the Sabbath Day educates us for service in God's Kingdom.

John Ritenbaugh maintains that becoming equipped for leadership requires that we discipline ourselves in following God's way of life, allowing the mind of Jesus Christ to be in us in order to please and glorify God. As we are imprinted with the character of God the Father and Jesus Christ, we become a beacon and positive help for others. A covenant is an agreement between two parties in which the solemnity of God's presence is invoked and those who make the agreement do so voluntarily, aware of the responsibilities either implicitly or explicitly entailed in the covenantal relationship. Though they seem complex, covenants impart unambiguous instructions. Of all the biblical figures, aside from Jesus Christ, no one exemplified faithfulness to God's covenants more than Moses, faithful as a shepherd, military leader, governor, statesman, minister, and negotiator with God. Moses also proved the humblest of any other human leader. Leadership requires faithfulness, not only hearing but doing, receiving the implanted word and acting upon its prompts. The Edenic Covenant, a universal covenant, was made with all mankind, a covenant displaying the awesome gifts of the Creator, including the marriage covenant, the building block for the family. Man and Woman (together designated as mankind) were both created in God's image, both incomplete without each other and meant to complement what the other lacked; she was Adam and he was Eve. Husband and wife are to cleave or cling to one another, providing a model or type of our desperate need to cling to and to become one with God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Martin Collins, asserting that prolonged inactivity will cause muscle mass to deteriorate, draws some compelling parallels to the equally alarming deterioration of masculine leadership, currently under attack in our culture by liberal progressive humanists and strident radical feminists. Consequently, many of our young men have become namby-pamby or self-centered, unable to provide for a family or contribute something productive to society. Although men have no moral or mental advantages over women, God has commissioned them to actively lead, providing a measure of security and stability to family and society. Man and woman are both fashioned in God's image, each gender having only a portion of the composite picture. Together, they are commissioned to be fruitful and multiply. In the family structure, man was instructed to lead the family and ardently love his spouse, while woman was commissioned to submit to his leadership, as both submitted to God's leadership. In assuming leadership roles, men need to abandon self-centeredness and adopt other-centeredness, being willing to go the extra mile as a living sacrifice. Feminism and cultural Marxism cannot give society the leadership our culture needs; only God's ordained family structure, with a man willing to be a living sacrifice, will fulfill that pressing need.

Richard Ritenbaugh, describing the development of the Feminist movement from its beginning in England, France, and later in the United States, suggests that the strident demands for abortion and in-your-face demands for 'equality' have led to high degree of social chaos. Some of the grievances feminists have expressed were legitimate, but the support of mass murder (abortion) as a "woman's right over her body" has side-tracked and obscured the legitimate concerns. Spiritually, male and female have equal potential and should have equal rights under the Law. But rights and legalities are far less important than spiritual development, subject to God-ordained gender roles. Together, men and women are made in the image of God; God was the template for all humanity, producing clay models which would serve as prototypes for permanent, spiritual beings. God gave humankind His attributes and abilities, having dominion over the earth, but not over other people. God made humanity in two flavors, but they are both in His image, dividing His traits equally between them. Men and women mutually excel each other in their God-ordained roles. Each gender complements the other as one flesh —one whole unit unified by marriage, an institution hated by radical feminists and homosexuals alike. Marriage is a God-plane relationship, prefiguring God's family (a reproducing of the God-kind), made possible by being fruitful and multiplying—the ultimate human good. Adam and Eve's sin complicated, but did not stop, God's ultimate plan for mankind. Sin destroyed our first parents' innocence, making them susceptible to shame and guilt, separating themselves from each other, fracturing (but not destroying) the one-flesh principle, sowing the seeds for a perennial battle of the sexes, bringing about drudgery and hard labor for both women and men. If women put down their desire to control their spouses and men really love their spouses, it will begin to reverse the consequences of the judgment oracles (stated in Genesis 3:16-

Marriage and progressive forms of "marriage" are in the news a great deal these days. From its earliest chapters, Scripture holds the divinely ordained institution of marriage in high regard. James Beaubelle provides the reasons why God considers marriage to be so important to us, society, and His purpose.

In discussing the Holy Spirit and the Trinity, John Ritenbaugh reiterates that the Holy Spirit is never venerated as a separate being (Revelation 22:1-3, John 10:30, John 17:3). Spirit (ruach-Hebrew or pneuma-Greek), something never seen, is manifested or personified in many diverse ways such as truth, adoption, anger, courage, grace, faith, (states of mind or emotion, character, or personality) etc. In every instance it is preceded by the words "spirit of." Spirit applies to an invisible force or power within man or beast or angelic being making them unique. Our hope of glory is the "indwelling of Christ" and is used interchangeably with "Spirit of God" and "Spirit of Truth." Jesus promised a spirit of power from on high made available for His disciples (as diverse spiritual gifts) to witness of Him. The Holy Spirit, as a force or power dwelling in us, enables us to keep God's law and to receive our new nature. Pneuma and ruach represent that invisible power applied in many diverse ways manifesting in us the power of God making it possible to have an intimate family relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ, perfectly unified in purpose and composition, analogous to the relationship of husband and wife—at one in a family relationship. Ruach Ha Kodesh or Pneuma Hagion (Christ in us) provides the metaphoric glue to make this cleavage possible - making our God-family relationship manifest.

John Ritenbaugh, reflecting upon problems understanding the W.C.G. 1974 doctrinal decision on Divorce and Remarriage, contends that any given doctrine must be built layer by layer, combining and comparing scriptures rather than allowing one scripture (such as Romans 7:1-3) to determine the doctrine. Jesus Christ initially appears to side with the position of Rabbi Shamei (divorce for adultery or marital unfaithfulness only) rather than Rabbi Hillel (who more liberally allowed divorce for any reason). When we understand that porneia includes all the hideous perverted sexual sins that go beyond ordinary adultery- including bestiality, pedophilia, homosexuality, incest, and every other imaginable sexual perversion, we understand that Jesus gave a greater latitude and flexibility in these divorce decisions than we had earlier assumed (based exclusively upon adulterous 'fraud'). Any violence against the marriage contract (stemming from unconversion) would constitute grounds for divorce, and would permit the converted partner to remarry. Mutual access to the tree of life (God's Holy Spirit) gives marriage the best (actually the only) chance to succeed.

Sexual topics and imagery are all around us, yet God covers the whole subject with His very terse and direct seventh commandment: You shall not commit adultery. Sex and marriage are God-given experiences that Christians need a proper perspective of, as this article shows.

Countering the Protestant red-herring argument, "You cannot earn salvation by works," John Ritenbaugh stresses that works certainly are not "done away" but that God expects works from all those He has called. We show our faithfulness and loyalty to God by our works or conduct - what we produce by what we have been given. The works demanded of us consist of continual striving to be faithful to our covenant relationship with God by keeping His commandments (not the traditions of men). As we strive to live by the Spirit instead of by the flesh (Romans 8:5) we will produce the kind of fruit pleasing to God. God forces a converted person to choose between two opposing forces (Romans 8:13), providing us His Spirit as a tool to overcome.

John Ritenbaugh reiterates that chapter 18 provides instructions to how to get along in the church. Jesus teaches a parable contrasting the enormity of what we are forgiven to what we forgive others. Our forgiveness by God is directly connected with our forgiveness of our brother; blessed is the merciful for they will obtain mercy. The Creator's life is worth more than the entire creation; offenses against us are a mere drop in the bucket compared to our sins against God. Gentile women became proselytes to Judaism because of the better treatment of women in the Bible as opposed to their treatment in Gentile religion. Sadly there was a wide variance between the ideal and the practice since the Jewish culture of that time also considered the woman a possession of her husband or father with no legal rights except those granted to her by her husband. Religious leaders, influenced by Hillel's liberal approach to divorce could grant divorces for trivial reasons. Jesus explained the original intent of marriage with Adam and Eve, who were explicitly designed for one another with no competition. Moses, because of the hardness of peoples' hearts allowed for a bill of divorcement as a temporary concession to their unconverted heart and mind, in order to prevent wholesale adultery. Uncleanness of heart is really the only real grounds for divorce, usually preceded by the unconverted mate leaving. In the case of desertion by the other mate, the converted person is free to marry. The ideal God intended in marriage can only be attained by those with God's spirit, with Christ living in them. Jesus admonishes us that we should emulate certain qualities of innocence and trust displayed by children as we become mature adults.

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The Bereans "received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:10-11). This daily newsletter provides a starting point for personal study, and gives valuable insight into the verses that make up the Word of God. See what over 145,000 subscribers are already receiving each day.

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